


Lamentations

by poppunkwolf



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Addiction, Alcoholism, Angst, Biphobia, Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Character of Color, Canon Compliant, Canon Lesbian Character, Domestic Violence, F/F, Gen, Homophobia, Internalized Biphobia, Internalized Homophobia, Mental Health Issues, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape Recovery, Religion, Romance, Sad, Violence, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 10:44:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7433632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppunkwolf/pseuds/poppunkwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the most beautiful and stable relationship Annalise and Eve have ever known, full of morning kisses and linked fingers and promises for the future. But Annalise is troubled by the demons of her past, and seeks help from a therapist named Samuel Keating who has precise and life-changing ideals on what Annalise needs to do in order to overcome her suffering.</p><p>A canon compliant story of what happened between Annalise and Eve all those years ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lamentations

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [prompt #1 here](http://poppunkwolf.tumblr.com/post/146968139212/here-are-my-prompts-1-annalise-first-therapy) and [also inspired by this](http://poppunkwolf.tumblr.com/post/146967366912/indigobluerose-l0ad3rb0t-i-want-more-stories).
> 
> Thanks Shaloved30 for betaing.

Eve woke up contented and peaceful and rested next to the most beautiful woman she had ever beheld, whose dark eyes and soft curves and silky, delicate skin made her feel vividly, purely aware of the fortune her life held. She woke up to the love of her life and instantly smiled, reached for her. Annalise laced their fingers together. Their joy, their smiles, were almost like laughter, the kind you give for no reason. She made breakfast while Annalise watered the cacti they had decided they were ready to commit to. They didn’t live together but it was only a technicality because Annalise had a toothbrush, weeks’ worth of clothes, all of her school books, half of the contents of the fridge, an assortment of sundries, and a tattered black Bible at her place. They were unofficially cohabitating, and Eve thought the joke about how delicious it was to live in sin – with an exaggerated wink – would land, but Annalise got quiet, decided to take a walk and answered her own home phone later.

“Are you okay?” Eve asked, and it was like she forgot every component of making conversation because when Annalise replied, “Yeah,” she froze and stammered, “Oh… well okay,” and spent the evening trying to study without placing too much attention on her anxiety.

 

She felt like she went from girlfriend to partner status when they hit their year and a half mark. In celebration she took Annalise to the beach, even though it was popular for straight people and if they had time to travel further she would have placed their celebration somewhere where they could be freer to hold hands, to lay together in the sand, to share an ice cream with two spoons.

“Well we don’t have to always be around homosexuals,” Annalise had said, and the distain in her voice felt like a dose of poison to Eve’s veins, especially because they weren’t - nobody she knew could choose to do that. People at Harvard in particular would rather choose their trust funds than their truth, and there were so many people forced to choose.

Eve was signed up for her only elective without Annalise, and she had developed the habit of pulling Annalise close and kissing her goodbye in the morning with campy, passionate enthusiasm. Annalise would slide her hands into Eve’s hair to pull her closer. They would take a few extra seconds to gaze into each other’s eyes.

“You’re perfect,” Eve said once. “If I were a stranger, I would hate me for being the one to have won your heart.”

Annalise had turned away, her shoulders in an uncomfortable clench, her gaze cast down.

 

They sat across from each other at the table studying when Annalise said, “So… I decided to go to therapy. I found someone already, named Dr. Samuel Keating.”

Eve looked up and took her hand, giving it a supportive squeeze. “That’s wonderful news.”

Annalise was perfect, yes, but she was unable to end a single phone call home without shedding tears about how her father mistreated her mother: when he failed to come home, when he cursed her in front of the neighborhood… old fashioned physical violence. When they had gone to see _What’s Love Got To Do With It_ in the movies, Annalise had left before it was over, with Eve right behind her, and she had collapsed into hard, unrelenting tears in the car in the parking lot. Annalise was perfect, yes, but so often she woke Eve up in the middle of the night in need of affirmation, in need of being held, and Eve knew it was another nightmare about the uncle who had crossed the threshold of her bedroom door and taken what was not for him. Sometimes she would be in bed beneath Eve in the height of bliss, begging her to keep going, pulling her closer, and in a sweeping motion she would freeze up, terror in her eyes. If Eve could figure out the catalyst of those moments, she would never do it again, but when they talked it out Annalise did not know what to say about these triggers that seemed too difficult and complex to put words to. Neither of them were therapists, after all.

But this Dr. Keating was. “When is your appointment?” Eve asked.

“It’s tomorrow morning,” Annalise replied, avoiding eye contact. “I would’ve mentioned it before, but I was torn on whether to even go.”

“I think it will really help,” Eve said. “I’m glad you found someone.”

 

Dr. Keating was fresh from grad school and ran his own practice out of his house, a dignified mansion in one of Philadelphia’s more prestigious neighborhoods. He came recommended by a friend of a friend in part because he had sought to make himself affordable to build his client base. He already sounded like a good guy before she met him.

She showed up early to his house. He opened the door and greeted her with a warm professionalism in his smile and led her to his office. They walked past the living room where a blonde woman, presumably his wife or girlfriend, sat reading and gave her a cordial nod. She had known that Sam was her age but she did not expect eyes like the ocean and a square jaw and a coolly tousled head of sandy-colored hair and she wondered if this would work out because your counselor is not supposed to be attractive.

He explained the rules about confidentiality and so forth. “I got your intake form in the mail,” he said, looking through a small pile of papers secured with a paperclip. “It was pretty vague in the section about why you’re here: ‘family issues’. Do you want to tell me more?”

She looked at him and wondered if she should just leave rather than go through what suddenly seemed so weird – telling a stranger the worst of things she had gone through.

“If someone in your family has ever abused you for example, I can help you.”

“Abused?” She fidgeted, crossing her arms. “What kind of abuse?”

“Abuse can include physical violence, emotional harm, neglect, or sexual violence, like rape.”

She had never heard the term before – sexual violence. It seemed grave, and she wondered if that was appropriate. “What if it wasn’t really his fault?” she nearly whispered. “What if a person forgot to lock her bedroom door? What if he was drunk?”

“It was still his fault,” Sam said. “Not yours.”

The way he was reading her was arresting, and she sat and struggled to determine if this was good. “What if I don’t get to be mad at him because he’s dead?”

“Sometimes people do bad things and then they die,” he replied. “It still happened and I am still here to help you think through it and handle your emotions and reactions.”

Being repeatedly bruised by the aftermath of something horrible is not the same as thinking about it. She decided to trust that Sam could help her close the Pandora’s Box of suffering she had been carrying.

 

Session number two shifted direction to another man, the one she wished she did not have to call father.

“…so he went to the backyard and got a shovel, and used it to break the sliding glass door.”

Sam’s expression was flatly calm. “Then what?”

“He came in with it. He swung it at my mother. But me and my brother and sister all tackled him - I remember it was like instinct - and we kicked him out. I wish I could say she got a divorce after that, but it took her years of that kind of drama to leave him, and she still talks to him as if he wasn’t that way.”

“What makes you remember this now?”

“I called my mom today and she put him on,” Annalise said. “I’m going to graduate soon from Harvard Law. And my mother tells me I should invite him. That I should forgive him for all the things he did when I was growing up.”

“Do you want to forgive him?”

“No. Should I?”

“Well you’ll never get the chance to forgive your uncle, not to his face. So think about what a relief it might be to forgive your father. Especially because his crimes were so much lesser.”

“I don’t want him there.”

“Well you’ll never have mature relationships with men unless you learn to move on from this. You’d be surprised what it can do for your soul.”

“My soul?”

“Or whatever you believe in,” he said. “I was raised Catholic but I’m a secular therapist.”

“So you believe in Jesus?”

“And his message of forgiveness,” Sam said.

“What did you mean when you said I could never have mature relationships with men?”

“You can. But you have to work on those relationships. Are you willing to do that work?”

What was she supposed to say? _No_?

“It can only happen when you look at your childhood and see what it did to you.”

 

Eve sat on the couch rubbing Annalise’s feet, giggling at the _Saved by the Bell_ rerun they were watching. Annalise said, “Do you ever think you might have suppressed memories? Like of traumatic things?”

Eve paused, thinking, and took a sip from her wine glass. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“Sam believes in repressed memory theory and he doesn’t think the things about people, the way they are, are coincidences.”

Eve realized that the new wine bottle they had opened, sitting on the coffee table, was almost empty despite the fact that she herself was still on glass number one. “Babe, you can’t have almost the whole bottle to yourself in the span of one episode,” she admonished. “Aren’t you sick to your stomach? And who is Sam?”

“Dr. Keating. That’s what he goes by.”

“Well what makes you think I would be suppressing a horrible memory?”

Annalise sat up on the couch and withdrew her feet from Eve’s lap. “Because why else would you have become a lesbian?”

 

Eve did not want to ask Annalise to stop going to therapy, so she asked to go with her.

“How am I supposed to explain you?” Annalise had retorted.

“… You haven’t talked about us?”

“No. He’s helping me and things are going well. I don’t want him to see me differently and judge me.”

 

Eve came home from class to find Annalise throwing up in the bathroom.

“Babe are you okay? What happened?”

Annalise waved her away, and when she went to the kitchen she saw a bottle of rum sitting opened on the counter. Annalise came in a moment later.

“I invited my father to the graduation,” Annalise said. “And then I felt bad, and then I didn’t know if I should call and uninvite him, and then I decided screw it, and just drank. I think I had a little too much.”

“It’s supposed to be our big day, Annalise, and look what it’s doing to you,” Eve said.

“I’m fine,” Annalise said, her voice cracking into sobs. “I had a minor crisis and now I’m fine.” She wiped her tears.

“You shouldn’t be using alcohol to cope this way.”

“Well everyone’s not fucking perfect,” Annalise snapped.

Eve took the bottle. “I’m gonna pour this down the drain now, okay?”

Annalise shrugged.

This acquiescence was a hopeful sign, an admission that Annalise could see the problem.

“I just want you to be okay,” Eve assured her.

“Sam will help me,” Annalise replied. Her gaze seemed far away as she smiled.

 

Annalise only ever went home to get specific items she needed, like a book or an item of clothing. She never went home just because, but once again she was at home and hadn’t called or picked up the phone from Friday to Wednesday. Eve knew her, knew when to pull her closer and when to let her push away, and even though she was dealing with her own sadness, she did not pull.

Eve laid in the too-large bed and tried to remember the steps of going to sleep alone, tried to remember how to close her eyes when Annalise wasn’t safe in her arms.

 

“Annalise?”

She had never used this key, not once, because Annalise was always there with her when they came to her place, but she entered the apartment on her own and tried to banish the irrational fear that she would find something frightening. Why hadn’t Annalise answered her phone?

“Annalise?” She headed to the bedroom, noting the pitch darkness in the living room from the blackout curtains.

She tried the bedroom door handle and it opened with a gentle click.

Annalise lay in bed awake, surrounded by a sorority house’s worth of empty bottles of alcohol. She blinked languid eyelids at Eve.

The smell of alcohol and unshowered misery overpowered the room. Eve went to the window and tugged it open with some effort. “Annalise, what is this? Please talk to me about this.”

“I told you I would call you,” Annalise said.

“I told you I would take care of you,” Eve replied. “You don’t get to drop off planet Earth and then be surprised I’m not waiting by the phone.” She went to the bathroom and procured a garbage bag from beneath the sink. She went around the room and picked up the empty bottles. “Why are you drinking when we have a final tomorrow? You’re literally not going to graduate if you don’t turn it in.”

“Maybe I don’t want to graduate,” Annalise said. She sat up with a wobble, like she was struggling to stand on a rocky boat. “No graduation, no family to deal with.”

Eve came to face Annalise on the bed. “Your father does not have the right to ruin this for you. You’re graduating from the most acclaimed law school in the world. Your father didn’t do a single thing to help you make that happen. You can still uninvite him.”

“It’s wrong to hold petty grudges against family,” Annalise said.

“Your feelings are not petty.”

“I think between you and my therapist, I’m gonna go with Sam on this one,” Annalise said.

Eve did not miss the esteem in Annalise’s voice, the softening in her tone, when she said _Sam_. She was not an irrational or jealous person, and more importantly she trusted the woman before her. She tried to stave off the most absurd of thoughts, the pink elephant of questions. _Are you fucking him?_

She told herself not to be crazy.

 

Eve graduated in front of nine members of her cheering family, seated so far from Annalise’s parents and siblings, and they all went to dinner at a restaurant across town from where Annalise and her family were going. Except for a brief hug, something she also shared with a few people whose names she was only eighty percent sure about, Eve spent the ceremony without Annalise acknowledging her at all. As if they hadn’t spent a year and a half loving each other. It was okay, she told herself. She respected Annalise’s process of self-acceptance. But she still felt like that process had shifted, and that she was a shame Annalise was not just trying to hide, but to overcome.

 

Their names were Anna (like her own birth name) and Elle. They were beautiful, an older couple who had lived decades together. The news kept them on loop, delivering every detail. The number of blocks the man had followed them. The way he’d used his rifle to break their lock. The places in their bodies he had fired the bullets. The words from the Bible he was using to justify it.

This was the future. There were men rampaging in the streets against them. The men in the community were dying at an all-time high from what some people said God was doing to them. Maybe this was something she could get out of her system in her twenties as a frivolous, rebellious moment of youthful scandal. The best way to imagine what she had been doing was as a _phase_. Or maybe the generosity of that concept was unfitting, and it truly was the grave sin, the abomination worthy of hellfire they had told her it was over and over and over again on Sunday.

 

She wanted to come to Eve’s apartment when Eve was gone, but now that they had graduated and Eve had started an apprenticeship, her schedule was changed. Instead of knowing it like intuition, Annalise had no idea when she came and went. So she showed up at noon.

“Hi,” Eve said, and opened the door for her with a surprised, relieved smile. Eve embraced her. “I’ve been feeling sad and overwhelmed and I’m so glad to see you. I’m tired of being terrified when I look at the news and I just want to hold you… what is this bag for?”

Annalise nudged herself out of Eve’s embrace. “I have too many things over here.” She headed with her duffel bag to Eve’s bedroom. “I can’t function at my place with half my underwear at yours. I just came to get them.”

Eve followed her. “If you want, we can start spending more time at your place.”

Annalise marveled at Eve’s consistency, her ability to be giving, selfless, stable no matter what. She was a rock. Would she ever find that again?

She went to the bookshelf and began to select titles, placing them in her bag on the floor. Her fingers got to her black Bible. “I know I wasn’t perfect,” Annalise said, “but before us, I feel like maybe I was succeeding at following what I was taught was right with God.”

Eve touched her hand, a gesture for her to stop packing. She did.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this to us,” Eve said.

Annalise saw the pink hue, like sunset, creep into Eve’s cheeks and then the rest of her face. Crumpled, teary, she said, “Did your therapist tell you that you were disobeying God?”

“Everyone believes that,” Annalise said. “Do you know I brought up the murders to my mom? She said, ‘Don’t talk about indecent things like women laying up with each other’. And then she changed the subject. She didn’t even mention the killer. He was less obscene to her than two women in love. Sam made me think about _why_. How can I heal? How am I supposed to have mature relationships with men if I’m running from them by being with _you_?”

Annalise continued to pack and Eve watched her in silence.

“You said you loved me,” Eve said. “We were supposed to get each other through anything.”

Annalise’s things were too heavy to carry, but she dragged her bag across the floor to the door. She looked at Eve and tried to stop herself from foolishly falling into the arms of the woman she wished there was a way for her to love.

“I do, but not in the way you deserve. I’m not gay,” she said. She reached for Eve’s cheek and brushed tears off her face. “I’m sorry. Don’t call me.”

She shut the door behind her and pulled her things to the elevator, wishing Eve would follow her, try to stop her, but relieved she didn’t. Against her jeans, she wiped the salt water of Eve’s tears off of her and tried to shift her thoughts to her next appointment with Sam.

She could never have made this progress without him.


End file.
